Anyone using MJ to address disordered eating from years of diet culture?

[85reasons]

Whilst I'm eating healthily on MJ and generally veering away from processed food etc, I'm also enjoying the feeling that I'm not having to obsess about carb counting or calorie counting.

I've been on some form of carb restriction or diet plan for the past 20+ years (or off it, and eating too much) and therefore in a yo-yo weight cycle that I'm really hoping has ended.

10 weeks into MJ and I'm eating with my children, not having to avoid them having any treats in the house because I couldn't trust myself not to eat them, and just feeling NORMAL. I can have one sweet or chocolate without fear of it bringing on a binge, so am not trying to cut out sugar or carbs completely.

I think this is the main reason I'd like to stay on a maintenance dose once I reach goal - I want to rid myself of the mental torture I've been conditioned to accept through diet culture over the years.

Same. Any 'treats' in the house would call to me constantly. I used to have to buy the children treats I didn't like so I wouldn't eat them.

Now I can happily not think about them. I can have a couple of DH's Maltesers when he's eating them and be perfectly happy. I'm still eating carbs - just smaller portions than before and it doesn't lead to a massive sugar crash and carb binge.

It's a total game changer for me.

Yes - same. To my shame my children (teens) had got to the point where they couldn't trust that I wouldn't end up stealing their chocolate or eat so much of a cake they'd made that they'd have a go at me about it... uggh.

I'm trying to stay away from 'diet foods' even if they are protein focused. I don't want to feel like I'm on a diet. I bought some protein powder but it made me feel uncomfortable to be going back down that familiar road - and I'm trying to focus on eating the same as everyone around me, and making us all delicious, healthy meals.

It's so hard though - even on MJ - to force myself not to try to cut out carbs for 'better' results, for example. When I was in a recent stall, I found myself thinking in a disordered way again about foods, what to eat, what to cut out, and tending towards eating less and less as a way of trying to break through the stall.

The mad thing is that I would never have said it was disordered eating whilst I was doing low carb, or keto, or on a 7 day fast, or carnivore, or juices only, or whatever it was. It all felt very normal - 'normal' ways of trying to avoid being obese, but over time I felt more and more afraid of any sort of balanced approach to food.

Yep, I’ve been on every diet going. Herbalife was the one I think really messed up my relationship with food. Granted I lost weight but piled it back on and more. I love food not being all I think about now but I do worry what the long term outlook will be.

I'm hoping that I can do a low dose every two weeks or something to maintain. Just gone up to 7.5mg and have another c25 pounds to lose to get to goal weight 🤞🏼

I've had 3 jabs now and it feels like my life is transformed- utterly life changing. I'm even losing interest in cookery programmes as the food looks beautiful but doesn't make me REALLY want to eat it. I have been yo-yo dieting for 25 years. Struggling with constipation though despite having loads of natural fibre and senekot - any tips?

Same here. I've had a lifetime of diets and thinking about carbs, calories, protein, what time of day it is etc. I'm absolutely sick of it and don't want to bring that into my life again.

It's so hard to explain to people who don't struggle with the food noise and having an eternal dieting backdrop to every single thing.

Anxiety about upcoming events, holidays, worrying about some lovely occasion because I'd want to eat like everyone else and it would 'set me back'... like you say am absolutely sick to the back teeth of it and don't want to ever go back.

For me this is not about "learning healthier habits" but it is about unlearning disordered thoughts about how to eat.

I don't want to ever buy a diet book again!

@85reasons you are so right. It's the same for me. Nothing to do with 'learning good habits' I've been obsessed with trying to stick to good habits all my life. I'm free for the first time!

Yes and by feeling free to choose the interesting thing is that I'm / we're mostly choosing good things - it's been so liberating!

And it's helping with self esteem to know that I'm mostly choosing good things, rather than forever battling, and losing often enough to scupper most weight loss attempts.

I'm really over demonising foods. I've read books about the need to do that, but have never been able to take it on board because for me, one biscuit really did mean the packet.

Yes! This is why want to start it. Decades and decades of disordered eating and weight loss plans. You name it I've done it. Some of things were truly mad looking back - eg not taking painkillers I'd been prescribed for a whiplash injury because the WW consultant told me they might affect my weigh in and having a SW consultant having a massive go at me because I'd been eating 1/2 an avocado a day not realising the syns (yet lost 4lb that week!). I need the noise to stop. It's always there....

It all messes with our heads so much. I would eat e.g. keto for a while, and of course I would feel a lot better (firstly from having cut out sugar etc, and having a reduced appetite) and that would reinforce that I absolutely MUST stay on this way of eating and never falter from it. But then when I did the appetite would come back with a vengeance and actuallly the disordered behaviours would get worse over time.

I think it's going to take a long time to really unpick.

This thread is giving me so much hope, I'm very young and obese. I suffer from disordered eating and occasionally binge eating and severe lack of impulse control around food. I also have a lot of food intolerance and so picky eater in general.
I don't even have the mental energy to stick to a serious diet so I totally don't even try to lose weight.
My plan is to go on weight loss injections in a few years when my finances and mental health are a bit better so that I can do that together with working out so to get healthy for the long term.
I'm still young and fairly healthy so my health is not an immediate concern but I know that I can't sustain this weight without paying the price, I'm so happy that I have options for the future.

This thread is SO relatable. I have never needed to learn what a healthy meal is, I bloody know. What I have needed is something that helps with the unhealthy binging on sugary snacks around those meals when the willpower struggle is just too hard. I'm only two days in and already understand what people mean about the food noise going. I've had a lazy telly weekend and would easily have put away a pack of biscuits or a 'sharing' bag of chocolate while doing so.
I hate the discourse that the jabs are somehow cheating. To my thinking it's leveling the playing field by taking away the constant EAT THE CAKE dialogue that some of us have clearly been struggling with for years. My hope is that it leads into a lot more research into the chemical or hormonal reasons people overeat as they do.

@namechange1579 I'm really glad that it's reassuring you about future options - that's fantastic. It really has been an absolute game changer and a future free of the battle feels very much possible.

@Odfod I can well imagine WW and SW consultants saying these things. Went to my first WW meeting aged 13 (taken by my mother - of course) and still remember the humiliating feeling of being weighed in public.

@PinkArt that's it - I feel like this is how naturally slim people have been living life THE WHOLE TIME - and we've spent decades living with the shame of not being able to "simply" eat less and move more. No more!

Exactly that. It hasn't been comparing like with like if we are somehow wired differently. I've done calorie counting, I've done crash diets and slow and steady, I've had disordered eating at both ends of the scale but the last two days are the first time in years, potentially decades when I haven't had an internal soundtrack telling me I could just pop to the kitchen for a snack. The idea that I can reset my brain as one of those people who just takes one biscuit and enjoys that one biscuit is such a game changer.

Op I could have written your post. I have had 25 years of problematic eating, always binging on sugar and hating myself for it. This has been life changing. I have no food noise. It feels like food is in its rightful place - nourishment to get through the day.

I made a cake and didn’t eat it all
I have selection box’s in the house that I haven’t demolished.

my eating was crazy based on diet culture and my own ridiculous standards. Only eating eggs for days on the egg fast diet.

I am worried about the ongoing cost and hoping the market will become more saturated.

So happy I took the risk’

I could have written this post. Once I went on it my thought was is this what thin people feel like?

When everyone says "cut carbs/ just have 1 biscuit" I genuinely could not understand that. In my head I would just obsess about the biscuit I wasn't "allowed" I would constantly think about food while trying to be " good" untill I would fail and binge.

Like you I'm now happy with a square of chocolate. I'm eating food for its nutritional value not its sugar and fat. It's so freeing. I originally went on to lose weight then come off but having this feeling I will probably stay on a maintnece dose longer term

I just made a seeded bagel with lots of roast chicken, butter, mustard, tomato and cucumber - a very normal lunch for people who haven't been screwed by diet culture for decades - but for me this kind of food used to be totally off limits.

I'd EITHER be having a carb free salad, super "healthy" but restrictive, or a meat/cheese heavy "I'm doing keto" lunch, OR I'd be going off piste and having something indulgent.

Instead I feel satisfied, and normal, and have had no desire to eat any more. 🤩

This is amazing! I have chocolate in the house for the grandchildren for Christmas and normally I would have dipped into it. But, it’s all still there. I also realised last week when thinking I want something to eat I realised I wasn’t hungry, I was bored! Complete breakthrough after 40 odd years of yo-yo dieting.